C&F restricted me from the forums for 5 days. Why?

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Tweeto
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C&F restricted me from the forums for 5 days. Why?

Post by Tweeto »

Ever since Saturday night, Aug 23, the site has been giving me a page saying that the forums are down "until 1am Eastern Standard Time". I checked it every day, and made sure to reload the page each time to make sure that it wasn't a cache issue. I had a page with the index still open in my browser, so I was able to try forums that I never usually go to (it couldn't have been a cache issue here either). The forums opened back up for me this evening, finally. However, I see that plenty of other people have been able to use the forums during this period.
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s1m0n
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Post by s1m0n »

The site moved servers. You might have been getting a stale page cached somewhere between your ISP and the real server.
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Post by MTGuru »

It is indeed probably a cache issue, if you reloaded the page only by clicking the refresh button (or pressing F5). Did you try:

a) Doing a "deep refresh" by pressing Control + F5 ?
b) Clearing your browser's cache by emptying it from the browser menu?
c) Clearing your browser's cache by deleting the cache files from your browser's cache directory?

The Chiffboard was offline for no more then ten minutes or so during the server migration on August 23, and maybe a few more minutes for DNS record propagation, and has been up and running since. So your suggestion that you were somehow singled out for restriction is unfounded, to my knowledge.

Edited to add: As s1m0n says, if your ISP uses a caching proxy, that could also account for the problem.
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Tweeto
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Post by Tweeto »

I guess it could be the cache proxy on my ISP thing that was suggested then, although I've never heard of that before. I was trying forums that I never had interest in before (such as the Poststructural Pub, etc), yet I would get the unfortunate page anyway, therefore I know that it couldn't have been my own computer's cache.
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MTGuru
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Post by MTGuru »

Let me get this straight. During the brief time the board was down, the main page displayed the offline notice with no forum links. So if that page was cached and you were visiting forums, how were you accessing them? By typing the forum urls and numbers directly into your browser? Or did you not get the offline notice on the main page?

You didn't answer my questions above. Did you try doing a) or b) or c)?

Just trying to understand what happened.
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Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Tweeto
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Post by Tweeto »

Before the server outage, I had already dedicated a browser tab to the C&F forums index page. I was accessing them from that (open each forum in a new tab...). It *is* the same as if I had memorized the URLs of the forums and typed them in manually. Since I hadn't visited some of the forums before the outage, I knew that at least those weren't in my cache.
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Post by MTGuru »

OK then. Another possibility is that your computer or your ISP's DNS server cached the old Chiffboard IP and didn't pick up the new DNS record when it was propagated at the changeover. So your forum links continued to take you to the old server and offline notices. The cached DNS record eventually expired and refreshed, and you were then able to access the new server.

Solutions in that case might have included flushing your DNS cache; asking your ISP to update their DNS record; or temporarily pointing your machine and/or browser to a different domain name server.

In any case, I'm glad it's working for you again.
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips

Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
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